Book a free consultation

HR Consultant

Julia Durbin

With 17 years’ experience working with executive teams and leading the people agenda as HR Director in the fashion retail, department store and beauty sectors I have worked with companies including Shiseido, Jacques Vert, Aurora Fashions and Debenhams as well as on an independent consultancy basis.

I pride myself on being commercial and agile, adept in working in small private equity backed and privately owned businesses as well as larger corporate environments. As a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD I bring big-picture thinking as well as hands-on operational excellence and experience of leading challenging business scenarios. My style is collaborative and energetic with a coaching approach.

Particular skills developed during my career are in organisation design and transformation, talent acquisition at all levels as well as building Lead Teams, change management, team engagement and culture development, leading and implementing the DEI agenda, succession management and training and development planning and execution.

I am passionate about working with organisations to enable business success through their people.

Q. What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done?

A. I inadvertently got whisked away riding bareback on a runaway horse through a coffee plantation in the Dominican Republic and once rescued, danced the night away in a straw hut with (unbeknown to me until I saw the photos) a tarantula dangling overhead!

Q. Who or what makes you laugh?

A. Winnie my 2 year old cocker spaniel and Gogglebox.

What our clients are saying

  • “

    Sarah allows our business to concentrate on the jobs we set out to do, and not have to worry about the HR input, with a highly professional service that she provides. 

    ”

    Stuart Barr, Director – Barr Group, Thame

  • “

    As always, SYLO delivered a thoughtful and insightful session and I enjoyed hearing their thoughts on valuing difference in the workplace. It has helped me to be able to think about how I can encourage the people I work with to consider how effective their inclusive policies and practices are.

    ”

    Karen Tate – Employee Relations Lead MPDN

  • “

    We have been using Breathe over the last term to track our staff holidays. This is a great system as it highlights different cohorts of staff and when is free for others to book on the calendar. This has supported our ratio requirements and helped us to track holiday entitlements.

    We like the system so much that we have extended it to using the staffing schedules to log staff attendance and hours needed to be processed for payroll. Sharon has been so helpful in helping us set up different employees work patterns and it has been really effective for our nursery needs.

     

    ”

    Phillipa Arnold – Operations Manager. Monkey Puzzle Day Nurseries – Cambridge Franchise

  • “

    ​I found working with SYLO incredibly comfortable.  They helped me to define the real issues and then guided me through figuring out a solution. This resulted in a huge shift in the workload I was carrying to manageable levels, greater and welcomed empowerment for the talent in my team, and a manager (mine) who was fully up to speed on what was actually going on.

    ”

    Georgina Carey, Senior Manager – Transport For London

  • “

    The wonderful support from SYLO Beyond HR has enabled us to ensure our foundations are in place to support growth, whilst also maintaining and driving the culture that is important for us to have in place.  They have truly worked in partnership with us and provide consistent support to help us drive priorities forward.

    It’s great to have an HR partner that feels part of our team, is available for whenever something comes up and that continues to work with us as our organisation grows.

    ”

    Carolyn Hicks, Co-founder/CFO COO – Brill Power

Get in touch

Want to learn more about our services or discuss your people needs? Use the form below to contact us and we’ll get back to you promptly.